De Gea: United stood up to be counted

Manchester United FC goalkeeper David de Gea said he was delighted to have proved wrong all those people who predicted an easy win for FC Bayern München at Old Trafford in Tuesday's UEFA Champions League quarter-final first leg.

"This is a big club and at difficult moments is when you stand up and show people how big you are," De Gea told UEFA.com after a 1-1 draw that leaves the tie "wide open" ahead of next week's return. Alexander Büttner, meanwhile, said United's game plan of solid defence and swift counterattack paid off as David Moyes's men maintained their unbeaten home record in Europe this season.

David de Gea, Manchester United goalkeeperThis is a big club and at difficult moments is when you stand up and show people how big you are. I am pleased with that – people thought it was going to be easy for Bayern and we have produced a big performance. We are satisfied. We feel we played really well – it was a big effort against a very strong opponent. We might even have won. We knew we had to defend well, shut down the spaces and hit them on the counterattack and we had some clear chances. Defensively we were good, we kept it tight. I think we unsettled them.

They're two different competitions and things haven't gone well in the league but the Champions League is a special competition, the team are doing really well and we have to go for it. I think we have a chance over there – the tie is in the balance, it's wide open and we'll fight till the end.

Alexander Büttner, Manchester United defenderIt was a hard game against a good team but I think we did well. We gave them just one chance for their goal so defensively and as a team we did well. They had the ball a lot but we stayed compact and that is important in games like this, then on the counter we had some chances. We knew that if they played high up the pitch that there were chances in behind them. We have some quick players up front like Antonio [Valencia] and [Daniel] Welbeck and Wazza [Wayne Rooney], and we created chances from that.

Michael Carrick, Manchester United midfielder[On Welbeck's 40th-minute miss when clean through] That is the one that sticks out for us, it would have been great if that one had gone in but as it happened we managed to go 1-0 up anyway. Who knows that would have happened – it was a chance that normally we'd take. We are not getting carried away, we know the task ahead of us is going to be tough and we're going to have to be at our best to get the right result over there. But we still believe we have a chance and will go over there really positive.

Ashley Young, Manchester United winger Everybody wrote off our chances before the game, but we had a number of chances. We know they are a good team and we all knew they'd have a lot of possession but we knew we'd get chances the way we were playing on the counterattack and we managed to do that. We created chances and obviously got the goal. It was a great team performance [and] the fans were fantastic from minute one – there was a great atmosphere.

The CHAMPIONS LEAGUE and UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE words, the UEFA Champions League logo and trophy and the UEFA Champions League Final logos are protected by trade marks and/or copyright of UEFA. No use for commercial purposes may be made of such trade marks. Use of UEFA.com signifies your agreement to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.